Dell catches nasty case of tablet fever

Dell appears to have contracted a serious case of tablet fever. Late yesterday the company rolled out four new Venue tablets on two operating systems and they look rather good.

The Pro series is reserved for Windows 8.1, not Windows RT – that was already dropped by Dell and other vendors. The big Dell Venue Pro 11 is 10.8-incher with a 1080p screen, 2.4GHz quad processor and up to 256GB of storage. There is no word on the price, but it will definitely be in Surface Pro 2 territory. The Venue Pro 8 is a different beast. It’s $299 and it has an 8-inch 1280x800 screen, with an unspecified Intel quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz. We reckon it’s a Bay Trail part.

The non-Pro series aims lower, quite a bit lower. The Venue 7 and Venue 8 are priced at $149 and $179 respectively and they come with Android 4.2.2. They are powered by Cloverview chips clocked at 1.6GHz in the 7-inch version and 2GHz in its bigger sibling. The resolution on both devices is 1280x800 and they feature 2GB of RAM, which is pretty nice in this price range.

There was no shortage of tech hacks on Dell’s Venue revival party and they reckon the tablets are rather good. The big Venue Pro 11 is said to be slightly bulkier and heavier than the Surface Pro 2 and the Android stuff looks good, too. However, the 7- to 8-inch Android tablet market is already overcrowded and Dell might have a tough time cracking it. At least it’s got pretty competitive pricing this time around.

In case you were wondering, Dell is not thinking about bringing back Venue smartphones, at least not for now.